


The Good Place

by kitkatt0430



Series: Femslash February 2020 [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Good Place (TV) Fusion, Aromantic Allosexual Lisa Snart, Aromantic Lisa Snart, Barry isn't a robot and isn't a guy, Caitlin is still in love with Ronnie, Caitlin wakes up in the Good Place, Conspiracy, F/F, F/M, Gen, Harry Is In Over His Head, Irregular Update Schedule, Lewis Snart mentioned but not appearing in this story, Lisa knows she doesn't belong in the Good Place, M/M, Mick does not like being called a Janet, More Tags to Be Added as the Story Evolves, Multi, Other, Ralph's soulmate is the noir genre, Temporary Amnesia, but she really likes Lisa too, deconstructing soulmates, eventual polyamorous relationships, mentions of torture, past Ronnie/Caitlin, queer platonic relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: Welcome to the Good Place.  Everything is Fine.(In which the Snart Siblings tendency towards chaos helps break the afterlife.  But that's perfectly fine - it needed to be broken anyway.)
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West, Cisco Ramon/Hartley Rathaway, Lisa Snart/Caitlin Snow, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Ralph Dibny & Iris West, Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Series: Femslash February 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617052
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

Caitlin's eyes open.

She's sitting on a couch - pale blue and comfortable - wearing her favorite outfit for work. Pink blouse, soft gray pencil skirt, and what feels like her lacy underwear that she wears when she wants to be more confident in herself because, even if no one else knows, it makes her feel a little sexy and powerful.

There's a sort of overwhelming sense of peace that filters in as she sits there, blinking at the words on the wall as they slide into focus.

Everything is fine.

"Caitlin Snow?"

Caitlin looks over at the stranger beckoning to her from the doorway. "Yes."

"Please, come on in."

* * *

She doesn't remember dying. But Caitlin doesn't question that she's dead. It feels... right. Like she'd already known before Harrison confirmed it.

_"You died in an accident at work."_

_"I don't remember..."_

_"We usually soften the memories of traumatic deaths," Harrison told her. "The memories of your last day alive will filter back as you become ready for them. Now, Caitlin... I want to welcome you to the Good Place."_

It certainly felt like a good place to end up, anyway. Harrison had taken her to the house of her dreams, a two-bedroom home with a semi-modern industrial feel to the living areas, and skewing away from the more industrial look within the bedrooms. The living room was big, sharing an open spacing with the kitchen and dining area and the kitchen was gorgeous, with wood cabinets stained with hints of cherry, gray floors that verged on pale blue, and a mosaic back-splash laid out in a pattern that wouldn't leave Caitlin staring at clusters of the same tile all over the place.

The whole place is open and airy and all hers. Across the street is the house for her soul mate, who should be arriving soon. Harrison had left before Caitlin could ask who it was.

She was hoping for Ronnie, her former fiance. He'd died in a car accident right after she earned her PhD, leaving Caitlin devastated and certain she'd lost her one true chance at happiness. Surely it had to be him... right?

Instead, when Harrison knocks at her front door again while she's investigating the second bedroom (turned half-library, half-office), he arrives with a woman Caitlin's never seen before. Gorgeous brown hair in soft waves, framing a face somewhat more tan than hers and an oddly amused smile.

"Lisa, this is Caitlin Snow. Caitlin, this is Lisa Snart. The two of you are soulmates." He looks pleased and Caitlin tries not to let her disappointment show.

She was pan so Caitlin was confident she could make pretty much any sort of soulmate relationship work out with this woman, be it romantic or platonic or queer platonic. But she'd been hoping... well... Caitlin had dearly wanted to see Ronnie again when she died. And she would, eventually.

It'd probably be rude to ditch her new soulmate to visit her former fiance on their very first day in the afterlife.

"Very delighted to meet you," Lisa purred, making Caitlin blush as they shook hands.

"Likewise," Caitlin agreed.

"I'll just let you two get to know one another," Harrison said, looking amused as he left them alone.

"Nice place you have here," Lisa said, picking up a geode paper weight off the living room's shelving unit. "Just what you always dreamed of, I suppose."

"It certainly seems that way so far," Caitlin agreed. "Harrison said your house was the one across the road from mine?"

"That's right." Lisa set the geode down. "So we're soulmates. That means I can tell you anything, right? And it'll stay between just the two of us?"

"Of course." The first hints of uneasiness finally began to rise within Caitlin. "Your secrets are yours to tell, not mine."

"You may have been a good person in life, but I was not. I was a thief, and a good one at that. My being here? Is some kind of weird glitch."

Caitlin had to go sit down on the couch. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I'm a thief, sweetie. The Golden Glider of Central City. You probably never heard of me, but that's what the press..."

"I've heard of you. Captain Cold's sister. Your brother stole your specialty weapons from a lab near where I used to work." Caitlin's voice sounds so oddly calm to her ears when inside she is massively panicking.

"Oh, good. You know about my brother." Lisa's lovely mouth curved into a pleased smile. "See, he and I died together. And unless whatever glitch brought me here affected him too, well... he's in the Bad Place. And I intend to save him."

Oh shit.

* * *

"The Good Place, brought to you by that feeling you get when you see two otters hugging."

Lisa refrained, barely, from rolling her eyes. Though when she glanced at Caitlin, she saw similar irritation on her 'soulmate's' face.

Caitlin met her eyes and blushed prettily, likely embarrassed at having been caught out. "I thought," the doctor muttered softly, "that being in the Good Place would mean no more boring orientation meetings."

Snorting softly in amusement, Lisa returned her attention to the screen in front of them where the video version of Harrison discussed the points system while a lot of words rushed across the screen behind him. A lot of the reasons for the positive and negative points seemed rather arbitrary to Lisa.

While not a Nickleback fan herself, there was no rational reason why being a Nickleback fan should be worth negative five-thousand points. And having _The Sound of Music_ as one's favorite movie should not be worth ten-thousand points.

"What the fork?" she muttered, trying not to scowl at the screen. At least the profanity filter had already been explained. And she wasn't the only one looking disturbed. Some guy in the row ahead of them - nerd glasses and ash blond hair - was muttering in what sounded like very agitated Latin while the Hispanic guy beside him - very pretty, long hair, Lisa wondered if he'd let her braid it some time - was sitting forward, eyes narrowed.

When Harrison had escorted Lisa to her house - an open plan studio apartment on the inside that Lisa actually would have liked when she was alive, but decorated in bright, eye-bleeding colors that made her very happy to escape to Caitlin's more tastefully decorated house - he'd chattered on about how she'd been a relief worker devoted to traveling the world to help others and how proud Harrison was that she'd been sent to his neighborhood - his very first neighborhood.

That had been the first glaring hint to Lisa that the Good Place, architected and built by non-human beings... might not actually conform to human ideas of what was good. This video was another, painfully obvious clue that something wasn't right.

But it, finally, came to an end and the real Harrison came back out on stage, followed by a younger looking man in jeans an a comfortable flannel shirt.

"Alright everyone, as the neighborhood architect I'll be happy to help you all settle into your afterlife in any way I can," Harrison addressed the crowd. "However, for any of your immediate questions or needs, you can call on Barry. Barry is an artificial life form designed to run neighborhood 12358W and will appear when you call his name. He can answer any question you might have and provide you with any thing you might need. For example, Barry?"

"Yes, Harrison?" Barry replied.

"I would like a turkey BLT from that little sandwich shop in Berkeley Connecticut called 'Berkeley's Squares'."

"Of course." Barry held out his hands and, with a sudden, pleasant bing noise, he was holding a plate with a sandwich on it. "One turkey BLT from Berkeley's Squares."

Harrison took the sandwich and ate a bite. "Oh, that's so good. Thank you, Barry. That'll be all for now."

Another bing sounded in the air as Barry disappeared.

The neighborhood's mainframe who had to answer any resident's questions and give them anything they asked for. Assuming the queries were genuinely private... that would be quite the advantage for getting Lenny out of hell.

Her eyes flicked over to Caitlin. Lisa's relatively certain she made the right call telling Caitlin the truth. A calculated risk to be sure, but as Caitlin's first instinct was to pour herself a glass of wine and not to go running off to Harrison's office to turn Lisa in... it's a risk that seemed to be paying off already.

* * *

There was a party that night at a large mansion down the road from Caitlin and Lisa's houses. They dressed to the nines, which Lisa found pretentious. Though Caitlin was smoking hot in her lilac, chiffon dress.

"I never wore anything this nice when I was alive," Caitlin had confided, twirling around in the privacy of the scientist's home, letting Lisa dress her up in tonight's finery. The delicate silver jewelry she wore had been Lisa's pick too.

In contrast to Caitlin's lightly colored dress, Lisa was wearing a dress that was such a dark shade of purple it looked nearly black. Their jewelry matched, though, and Lisa thought the overall effect of the two of them standing side by side was quite striking.

Once at the party, though, Lisa got bored fast. It was mostly a bunch of self-congratulatory assholes bragging about how good they were in life and drowning themselves in finery and jewels.

Even Caitlin looks uncomfortable as nearly every conversation twists around from introductory small talk to 'look how amazing I was'. Even something as innocuous as 'that dress is lovely on you, is it similar to something you wore while alive?' turns into a conversation about raising millions of dollars in charity on a regular basis and how of course they'd never wear something so pretty while mucking about with the heathen poor of 'insert third world country here'.

"I bet I could slip that god awful thing off her wrist and she'd never even notice," Lisa murmured in Caitlin's ear.

Caitlin blushed. "I shouldn't encourage you," she demurred, but there was a spark in her eyes. A challenge.

Five minutes later, Lisa held up a gaudy golden bracelet covered in so many rubies that it tipped over the fine line between ornate and gaudy.

It's ridiculously satisfying to see Caitlin's giddy little grin before she covered her mouth with one hand. There's a giggle Caitlin can't quite contain either.

She's hot and charming. And adorable as she takes the bracelet from Lisa to give back to the 'owner'.

"I'm sorry, I think you dropped this? The clasp must have come loose." Caitlin bats her eyes and her lie is swallowed ever so easily. 

"Spoil sport," Lisa teases with a smirk as Caitlin comes back to her.

"Not too much of a spoil sport, I hope," Caitlin objects, then adds. "That was kind of hot. Who else would make a good mark?"

Lisa's smirk notches up the slightest bit. Caitlin's got a thing for the bad girls. As long as Caitlin wasn't looking for romance, Lisa could work with that. 

* * *

In the morning they wake to chaos.

Nickleback's "Photograph" is blaring loudly all over the place, gaudy jewelry is raining down from the sky, and everyone is dressed in penguin themed pajamas. There's also flying shrimp for some reason.

Lisa isn't dressed up in one of the penguin jammies. She has to ask Barry for a set, confirming for both Caitlin and her own satisfaction that personal queries are completely anonymous. Nothing they ask for, or about, will be reported back to Harrison.

Which is good, because Caitlin's pretty certain at least some of the chaos relates back to things Lisa said or did the night before. Like an off hand remark she'd made about people in penguin suits or how she'd spent the evening stealing jewelry for Caitlin's amusement. But not all of it stems back to her. The shrimp, for example. That one's just weird.

Caitlin's not ready to say anything yet, but she's pretty certain that means someone else doesn't belong in the Good Place neighborhood.

And... if Caitlin's being completely honest, she isn't sure she belongs in the Good Place either, but that's a thought she's not ready to examine too closely just yet.

* * *

Harrison observed the chaos sequence with a sigh of relief. It had gone off without a hitch.

Of course, it had gone off without a hitch last time too.

Neighborhood 12358W was not actually a Good Place Neighborhood, something the inhabitants were meant to discover in time. Humans weren't fundamentally good or bad people, but circumstances what they were on Earth it was incredibly difficult for humans to make it into the Good Place on their own merits from their time on Earth alone. Most wound up in the Medium Place or the Bad Place. Those in the Bad Place were evaluated on criteria determining whether they were capable of learning from their mistakes or not and their torments usually were designed around teaching them to be good enough to make it into the Medium Place. Some crimes were considered too great, like knowingly participating in a genocide, and merited an eternity in the Bad Place, but those were rare.

And as the Bad Place was meant to funnel people into the Medium Place, so too was the Medium Place meant to funnel people into the Good Place. People could choose to stay and live in eternal mediocrity or they could choose to join learning modules and become truly good people. And in the Good Place there was said to be a doorway that led to a final cessation of existence, though what really happened when one choose to step through was unknown.

It was a relatively new system and the Ethereal Plane had to be taken out of sync with Earth for several millennia while the kinks in the system got worked out and the new point system finalized.

Harrison's neighborhood was experimental even by the new standards, however. Modeled after the original Neighborhood 12358W, Harrison intended to use what had been seen by the Architect Michael as a bug and turn it into a feature. Human memory was an interesting phenomenon and just because they couldn't remember something, or someone, didn't meant that event or person was completely forgotten. Something always stuck around in the subconscious. There was some metaphor about ogres and onions that was appropriate here, but Harrison couldn't remember it at the moment.

Largely because Hunter Zolomon was standing right next to him and he was probably one of the most terrifying architects Harrison had ever met. Excluding Eobard or maybe Shawn.

The most innovative aspect of Harrison's neighborhood was that it's torture/teaching for one of the residents was tied to the ongoing torture of a resident in a different neighborhood. Zolomon's neighborhood. (Harrison wondered if Hunter had a middle name. Didn't most serial killers go by all three names? First Middle Last? And Hunter Zolomon put off the worst serial killer vibes Harrison had ever encountered, and he'd met actual serial killers like James Jesse.)

Honestly, Harrison wasn't really sure how Zolomon's neighborhood was meant to teach the residents to better themselves. It looked, to Harrison anyway, like a normal torture neighborhood straight out of the old days. But Eobard had assured Harrison it was all above board. It wasn't the only inconsistency Harrison had noticed, but after how badly the first iteration of his neighborhood had gone, Harrison was wary of making any further waves.

Lisa Snart's brother, Leonard Snart, was supposed to be in Zolomon's neighborhood. 'Supposed to be' being the key phrase there.

Lisa's torture was a fairly simple three-step plan. She was set with the Sisyphean task of locating her brother, mounting a rescue, and failing because it would be revealed that she'd never been in the Good Place to begin with. Leonard would be returned to his torments, Lisa would get her memory rebooted, and her desire to rescue her brother would be repeatedly capitalized on to teach her lessons about what it really means to be a good person. She was unlikely to be willing to move on to the Medium Place without her brother, so odds were she'd continue to be a resident of Harrison's neighborhood until they could leave together, as Lisa had less to learn than Leonard Snart did.

It was a good plan, for a certain definition of good, anyway. Or it would have been had Lisa Snart not successfully freed her brother from Zolomon's neighborhood during the first damned iteration.

Harrison still can't quite pinpoint when things started going off the rails. But some eight months into the first iteration - which was supposed to last at least a decade - Lisa found out about Barry's train related travel functions. And with the other humans in tow, Lisa had sprung her brother from his personal hell. The humans had been headed for the Medium Place, which was an infinite realm where they could have hidden for potentially millennia, either blending in with the Medium Place population or decoupling Barry from the current neighborhood to create a new one in the far reaches of the Medium Plane. But humans didn't have the ability to decouple a Barry from one neighborhood and connect him to a new one. Only Architects had that sort of training. (Okay, so there was apparently one Architect in the Medium Place who used to be a human, but Harrison had never met her.)

Harrison's own apprentice had masterminded the plan. Claimed he was doing it because Eobard had deliberately altered records in accounting. The whole thing had turned into an embarrassing mess, but all the humans had been recaptured and returned to Harrison's neighborhood... all the humans, except for Leonard Snart. In the chaos, the genius thief had seemingly vanished.

Eobard had sentenced the apprentice architect to retirement and Harrison had been very lucky to escape that fate himself. Being torn into a thousand tiny pieces and disposed of on the surfaces of a thousand burning suns was not something Harrison cared to ever experience himself. But in order to escape retirement, he'd been ordered to execute his former apprentice personally. To look a friend... a former friend in the eyes and...

What happened that day still haunted Harrison. And Hunter's gleeful jealousy over not getting to do the deed himself made it all the worse.

If Harrison could keep the neighborhood from derailing a second time - could make it past the sixth month mark, hitting all the expected landmarks with little deviation - then Zolomon would go back to his own little nightmare realm. The elder Snart sibling would be recaptured eventually and the torture plan for Harrison's five humans would continue as expected. There were alternate routes Lisa's personal torture could take, if necessary, while her brother was still on the lam. 

He just had to hope Hunter didn't notice that Harrison had originally been assigned only four humans.


	2. Chapter 2

Hartley stared into the mirror and fiddled with the collar of his shirt, buttoning and unbuttoning the top button on repeat.

There was something... wrong. There was something wrong with the way he looked, but Hartley couldn't quite put his finger on it. Presumably this was how he'd always looked. Hair somewhere in that nebulous place where it might be a light brown or it might be a very dark blond, tortoise-shell styled glasses, a light dusting of freckles on his face...

 _"Occasionally there are glitches in the system,"_ Harrison had told Hartley when he'd awoken, staring at the Everything is Fine with no memory of his entire life on Earth. _"A small percentage of humans react badly to our method for erasing the memory of traumatic deaths. Instead of the events leading up to their death being faded, their entire memory..."_ Harrison made a little poof noise and mimed his hands sort of flicking open. Probably not intended as actual sign language, some part of Hartley's brain that remembered languages told him.

And wasn't it unfair that he could remember knowing, like... six or seven languages but couldn't remember learning any of them?

 _"You'll remember eventually. In a few decades, probably. Don't worry about it; your life on Earth isn't nearly as important as the eternity you'll get to enjoy here in the Good Place."_ Harrison's words were less comforting than the Architect thought they were. His life on Earth was why he was in the Good Place instead of the Bad Place. So of course those memories were important. Those memories were what made him who he was, so who was he without them?

Having an existential crisis was probably not how Hartley had envisioned spending his time in the after life before he'd died.

Sighing, Hartley left the button undone and cast a wary eye at the video system controls. Supposedly he could watch his entire life from his point of view through that thing. Might even shake a few memories loose.

He was just... scared he wouldn't like the person he used to be, which was just... he got into the Good Place. That had to mean he'd been a nice, likable person in life, right?

Instead of touching the interface, Hartley headed out of his apartment over the bookstore - apparently the store was his, though what the point of a bookstore was in an afterlife where someone could just ask Barry for any book they wanted, Hartley had no idea - and let himself into the storefront. It wasn't locked - very few doors in the Good Place had locks, because who would steal anything in the Good Place? - and there was something about the slightly musty smell inside that made Hartley smile despite himself.

So maybe there was something to owning a bookstore after all.

"Oh, hey, there you are," Cisco said, popping into view from around a set of shelves. "I was about to head upstairs and check on you, but then I noticed this and..." he waved a book that was too far away for Hartley to read the title on the cover. "I followed this series when I was alive and was pretty excited about the new one coming out. Now I can finally read it."

"It's all yours then," Hartley told him. "First sale of the day." He smiled, awkwardly.

"What's wrong?" Cisco tucked the book under his arm and came forward, holding out a hand to Hartley.

"I still can't remember anything," Hartley admitted. "I guess I was hoping something would jar loose over night. Didn't really think about it with all the weirdness with the flying shrimp and the... that was Nickleback, right?"

"Yeah."

"Still not sure how that could possibly be worth negative five thousand points, though there was definitely something irksome about the song." Hartley shrugged. "But when I was changing out of the penguin pajamas, it just sort of hit me. I like these clothes," he gestured to the green flannel button down and dark blue jeans he was wearing, "but no idea why. I can't remember what my favorite color is or my favorite movie or even my least favorite movie. If I ever dated or married, who my parents are..." he didn't mention the video system and, thankfully, neither did Cisco.

"Well, I might not be able to help you with the personal details like your parents or significant others, but I can totally help with the movies. We can watch a movie, or a tv show, every day. Find out what genres you like and develop some very hot take style opinions on what actors you like and dislike. Starting with _Star Wars_. You don't remember who Darth Vader is, so this is gonna be awesome." Cisco clapped his hands together and then not-cursed softly under his breath when he accidentally dropped his book. Sheepishly, he picked up the book and then reached over to offer Hartley his free hand. "Sound like a good plan?"

"I... yes. That sounds wonderful."

Hartley let Cisco lead him back out of the bookstore and upstairs once more, pausing just long enough to stick a sign in the store window advising people to help themselves. Then they settled on Hartley's couch, asked Barry for a bucket of popcorn and then asked Barry to join them, which he did though he settled onto one of the chairs. And then Cisco used the video system to pull up the movie they wanted. _Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope_.

"Why are we starting with the fourth movie?" Hartley asked, confused even as he grabbed his first few kernels of popcorn. The buttery taste was addictive and Hartley decided he liked it.

Cisco paused the movie before speaking. "Because it was the first one made. It was originally released as just _Star Wars_ , but was later retconned to be the fourth in the series with the two following movies released as numbers five and six. Then the prequel trilogy was made, which wasn't nearly as good because no one knew how to tell George Lucas no anymore. Afterwards he sold the series to Disney, which released a sequel trilogy which also served as a soft reboot. But because Disney didn't use the same director and production team for all three movies, the sequel trilogy ends of as more of a rehash of the original trilogy. It's not unwatchable, but it is kind of a mess. There are two more movies that work as stand alone plots and a couple of animated tie in tv-shows. And so many books and video games. But before you get too worried about getting sucked into the fandom, lets just see if you like the original movies first, okay?"

Hartley nodded, feeling vaguely overwhelmed. He had to remind himself he was dead now. He had all the time in the world to delve into whatever series he wanted to.

And... Cisco was really nice. Cute too.

Really cute.

* * *

Iris groaned, feet propped up on the arm rest of her couch while the rest of her lay flat on the cushions, eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Here she was in paradise and bored already.

Probably because she was the only one without a 'soulmate'. Which was total BS.

Soulmates, according to Harrison's explanation, were two or more people who essentially matched up as being compatible based on what amounted to an afterlife personality quiz. It was similar enough to the criteria for placing people in neighborhoods that one could argue everyone in the neighborhood were soulmates. And somehow, despite all of that, Iris didn't get matched to anyone else? Even with the neighborhood having an odd number of people, Harrison had specified 'two or more people'. So why wasn't she part of a triad? Harrison had told her that the neighborhood was only partially full and that they'd receive another influx of the dead when they synced back up to Earth time in about ten years. She'd probably get a soulmate then. 

For a Good Place Architect, ten years was probably the blink of an eye. To a newly dead human soul, a decade was a very long time to wait alone for a 'perfectly matched companion' indeed.

So now everyone else was busy getting to know their soulmates and Iris was alone and bored and... and sad.

From her point of view, she'd only gotten out of a relationship two weeks ago. She'd been dating Eddie for over a year and their relationship had been perfect. Seemed perfect anyway. But sometimes Iris had felt like there was something missing. Some spark that didn't... 

He'd asked her to marry him the same day she'd resolved to break up with him and stay with some friends. The whole thing was a mess and Iris still felt terrible about it. And now she was dead. She couldn't even imagine how much that must have hurt Eddie. He'd wanted her to explain where they went wrong, but she couldn't put it to words, could barely understand it herself. She'd just been... unhappy. And now, even if should could find the words to explain, he'd never get closure. Not while he was alive, anyway.

Iris honestly didn't know if she hoped he'd gone to her funeral or if she hoped he'd stayed home and indulged in self care. He didn't treat himself to nice things nearly enough.

She missed him. She wasn't in love with him, but she cared about him and she... she just really, really missed him.

There was a knocking at the door and, reluctantly, Iris got up to greet whoever it was. Hopefully not another happy couple here to wish her a pleasant afterlife. She'd gotten enough of that at the party last night.

It was not a couple, however. It was one guy. All on his lonesome. Cute smile, perhaps a touch too manic looking though.

"Hi," Iris greeted.

"Hi, I'm Ralph, Harrison's apprentice."

"Iris. Nice to meet you," she offered, shaking his hand. "Want to come in?"

"Yeah, this would be better discussed inside," Ralph said, glancing over his shoulder and then hurrying into her apartment. Outside it was a first floor tiny house but on the inside it was a spacious high rise with a balcony that had a gorgeous view of the New York skyline.

"So what is it you don't want to talk about outside?" she asked, shutting the door.

Ralph pulled out some sort of device from his pocket to fiddle with, but what he'd said plus his clear nervous, fidgety behavior had Iris' reporter instincts sitting up and taking notice. She itched for a pen and a pad of paper.

"There are some problems in the neighborhood. I think you probably noticed the welcome video was kind of... dated. The system got completely overhauled not too long ago and the intro video was supposed to have been updated. Instead, the old one got played. It's no longer a cardinal sin to be a Nickleback fan, for example."

"I had wondered. Not my favorite band, but there were some of their songs I rather liked. Not _Photograph_ , though. Way too overplayed." Iris did enjoy the meme it had spawned, though it was rather overplayed too.

"There have been other problems too, like this morning's chaos. Or before that, there were some problems getting the neighborhood itself setup. We even had to reboot Barry, which... we suspect that someone from the Bad Place is interfering with the neighborhood. The new system put in place has turned the Bad Place and the Medium Place into basically a teaching experience, meant to slowly improve people and funnel them to the Good Place with the idea that, with enough care and support everyone will be able to reach the Good Place one day. But there are a lot of... hard core purists who think the old system of just torturing everyone who wasn't a hundred percent perfect is the way to go. And since in the old system, no one in this neighborhood would have made it to the Good Place..."

"You think someone is trying to sabotage the neighborhood?"

"And clearly doing a bang up job of it. You were an investigative journalist when you were alive, right?" Ralph grinned when she nodded. "Well that's, uh... that's the real reason Harrison didn't make you part of a poly soulmate group. I mean, if you want that we can still pair you up with someone... er, someones anyway, but I could really use your help investigating this on the down low. Harrison's got some higher ups breathing down his neck or he'd be looking into this himself. And I know how our systems are supposed to work, but not the first thing about investigative work, so..."

Iris was grinning. She couldn't help herself. This was... this was exactly the sort of thing she'd loved to do when alive. Who needed a soulmate when she was getting one more chance to embrace her true calling? "Of course I'll help."

"Oh thank god," Ralph heaved a sigh of relief. "So... fedoras are in, right? Because I always thought I'd look dapper in a fedora and trench coat."

* * *

Cisco walked into his home and left the lights off, though he wished he had a wallet and keys to drop on the table, just because it was still an ingrained habit, despite the many months he'd been dead.

"Where have you been?"

"Holy fork!" Cisco jumped and smacked right into the door frame between the entry hall and the living room. If he were alive, he'd have the beginnings of a massive bruise. "Just about gave me a heart attack, Harry," Cisco snapped.

"You don't actually have a heart anymore, Ramon," Harry retorted. "And don't call me that. How is he?"

"Confused, frustrated, afraid... he doesn't think we're lying to him, if that's what you're worried about," Cisco replied, tone a touch snide. 

"It's for his own safety."

"You made that very clear when you talked me into this forked up plan in the first place." Cisco crossed his arms and scowled at Harry. "You said you made him human."

"That's right." The other man... no, the demon nodded. "Just as human as you or Caitlin, Lisa, Iris..."

"He just never got the chance to live before dying, as a human anyway. Is what you did to him reversible? When this is over, does he get his life as a fire squid, or whatever he was under the suit, back just like it was before?"

Harry looked away. Which was answer enough for Cisco.

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out of my house. I will maintain the fiction that I don't remember the first version of the neighborhood. I will look after Hartley and keep him safe because he's my friend too. But what you did... you can say you were protecting him or saving his life, but you were covering your ash first and foremost and I don't want to be around you any more than I have to. So unless there's something super important to tell me, then get the heck out of my house." Cisco's hands were clenched into fists and he was practically vibrating with anger.

"I just wanted to know how he was settling in, that's all." Harry stood up. "I'll go."

"He'll be okay. We watched _Star Wars_ and he liked it."

"Or he liked the company he had," Harry headed towards the front door. "He liked you a lot. I don't he said anything, but... he liked you. That's why he started investigating you and the others for discrepancies in your point totals. He didn't think you, specifically you, belonged in the Bad Place."

"Harry..." Cisco practically growled the name and the demon sighed before, finally, walking out the door. Only then did Cisco take a few shaky, steadying breaths. 

_"You were lying to me. This whole time you've been lying to me!"_

_"Cisco, I'm sorry. It was my job. You were all supposed to be horrible people and it was my job to lie and push you all through events meant to force you to grow into better people. But you were already a good person. That's why I started looking for proof that someone had messed up your files. Your point totals don't match up with your actual life events and I... the more I got to know you, the more I... I knew I had to find a way to fix things. And Cisco... I never lied about how I feel about you."_

He'd flinched away that day. Flinched away from Hartley's words and his feelings because Cisco had fallen in love with him and felt utterly betrayed to learn about the lies and deceptions. And here was now... shoe on the other foot, as it were.

Making is way over to the couch, Cisco curled up and buried his face in a pillow. It was so hard looking at Hartley and seeing no recognition on his face. No memory of the months they'd spent falling for each other... he probably should have gotten clarification on a few things from Harry before kicking him out. But at least with him gone there was no one to hear Cisco cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops, forgot to hit Cisco with the profanity filter - now updated with forks


	3. Chapter 3

"So, this must be where marbles go when people lose them," Len drawled, picking up one of the tiny spheres and peering into it. And nearly dropping it when he saw a face inside staring back. "The fuck?"

"They're not really marbles. They're retired Neighborhood interfaces. Most of them are Janets," Sarah told him, taking the marble away and sticking it back on the rack with the rest of them. "I'm surprised no one's reactivated them, but... whatever. We've got a fuck ton of Janets already and the last thing we need is for a bunch of Disco Janets to start rollerskating through the realms again."

"Janets," Len repeated slowly. "What is a Janet?"

"Okay, so..." Sarah tilted her head to the side. "Before we got separated from your sister, that group of people she was with. There was one person in particular with the special abilities. The non-binary one calling himself Barry."

"Not a guy, not a robot, yeah I remember. He... he was a neighborhood interface." Len remembered Meadow telling them that. What kind of a name for a demon was 'Meadow' anyway? "Meadow said he was going to use Barry to establish a temporary neighborhood in the Medium Place."

"That's right. Well Barry was a Janet. Sort of. I mean, he could have started off as a Janet, but he was probably one of the new models. One of the Janets achieved true sentience and created a bunch of new people with interface capabilities. They're not human so most don't identify with human genders, but each one has their own pronoun preferences." Sarah shrugged when Len raised an eyebrow at her. "Sorry. I really don't know how else to explain them. Anyway, Meadow's plan wasn't a bad one. But with Eobard's lackey's scouring the Medium Places' empty regions for you, the plan needs a little... tweaking."

Sara grabbed a rolodex out of... seemingly nowhere. Len was pretty sure she'd plucked it out of a dimension that demons, or whatever she was, could see and humans couldn't even begin to comprehend. "The last place they'd think to look for you is in the Bad Place. There are still some unexplored corners of this realm. It does stretch on for infinity, after all. But not only are we going to lay low in the Bad Place, we're going to do so using a retired neighborhood, since who would think to check if one of those were suddenly running again. Which means we need something that isn't too awful. We don't want to be stuck in a neighborhood where the music is all Dave Lister's guitar playing from _Red Dwarf_ and the bees all have mega sized dicks instead of stingers." Sara was idly flicking through the rolodex and Len was... a little afraid to ask if she was citing a specific example or just making shit up off the top of her head.

"I prefer the mega sized dicks be on a hot guy I want to ride, so yeah. Let's not have any dick-bees flying around," Len drawled.

"Oh, so you're a size queen, huh?" Sara flicked her gaze over to him, smirking. "If you're interested, I've got some very generously sized strap ons I could peg you with."

"I'll keep that in mind," Len responded with a grin. She was apparently some kind of fiery phoenix-canary underneath the blonde human suit, but Len kind of thought that just made her hotter.

"Hmm... well, that doesn't too... no. Never mind." Sara flicked through the cards some more and then put away the rolodex. "Next cart." She flicked a lever off to the side and the bookcase sized cart full of marble trays was sucked into the ground as another one came sliding down from above to take its place. 

The carts stretched on for miles in every direction and it appeared each shifted at the same time when the lever was pulled. Convenient, since it meant they wouldn't have to walk from cart to cart to cart... especially since Len suspected that, like many things in the afterlife, this particular void could stretch on for eternity in every direction. Including up and down. It's why Len was trying not to pay too much attention to the seeming nothingness beneath his feet.

"What's your opinion on the show _Kim Possible_?" Sara asked after a moment of flipping through the new rolodex she'd, once again, pulled out of nowhere.

"Exploitation of child labor is bad, especially when super villains are involved. Naked mole rats are nothing like Rufus. And I kind of wanted to be at least half of the villains on the show." Len shrugged when Sara gave him an amused look. "I also wanted to be most comic book villains and also Boba Fett. Being a nerd and being a thief are not mutually exclusive."

"Fair enough. And Boba Fett was kick ass, so I totally get the appeal." Sara paused and then added, "but I guess what I'm getting at is, would you be cool with living in a Hell Dimension patterned off of _Kim Possible_? Pretty sure I can rig it to where we're just spectators, though if you want we might be able to take the place of Drakken and Shego. But I'm Shego in this situation, capiche?"

Len wrinkled his nose and made a skeptical noise. "It's one thing to idly fantasize about being a super villain, it's another thing entirely to actually be one. Let's keep looking."

Sara shrugged and flipped through some more. "Dick-bees again. Really?" She sighed and moved on to the next cart. Nothing caught her eyes there either. Then, finally, "okay, this one sounds promising. You have to attend an art class every day with a nude model. Dude nude model, very built. Probably a refurbished Bad Place Janet, from what I'm reading. This hell neighborhood used to house a homophobe who has since been rehabilitated enough to be booted up to the Medium place. Anyway, sound like a fun place to lay low?"

"Nude models are pretty much always my kind of sexy," Len assured her with a smirk. "Bring on the male model."

"Right, lets see..." she reached on her tip toes, arm stretching for a marble on the top rack near the back. Once she had the marble in hand, she peered into it's depths. "Oh, yeah, refurbished Janet. This is an older neighborhood, so they probably grabbed a regular Bad Janet, re-coded the appearance, name, and presentation to be a dude. Don't know what his name is, but he certainly looks built. Might have to ask to take him for a spin myself. Anyway, let's de-marbelize this sucker." She pulled out a paperclip, held the marble up and away from herself, and then poked the marble with the paperclip.

Almost immediately, Sara was pulling away from a handsome, naked man. Bald with some scars here and there, not to forget that he was very... generously proportioned. Len might have been drooling. And considering the best way to ask new guy and Sara for a threesome.

Except... new guy just stood there, not breathing, eyes shut.

"Ah, right. Marbelizing puts them in standby mode. I've got to reactivate him and I need the owners manual to do that 'cause I don't know the first thing about activating a neighborhood interface. Help me get his mouth open."

"What?" Len asked, tone flat.

"There's a spacial cavity inside his mouth that houses the user manual," Sara said, already prying at the guy's jaw. "Just get over and help me out already."

"This is so weird," Len muttered, joining her in front of the naked man anyway and helping pull his mouth open.

Thankfully, once open the guy's mouth stayed open. Sara reached inside, way too much of her arm disappearing for Len's comfort. And then she pulled out a huge reference manual that could not have possible fit in a human's mouth.

"Okay, so... appendices, every instruction manual should have one of those, right?" Sara flipped to the back. "Okay, now for reactivating from standby mode..." she flipped forward to the middle of the book. "Okay. The Janet will need a new pin number... okay, I got it. Hold this, keep it open where it is for me, just in case I missed something, alright?"

"Yeah. Sure." Len took the book from her and watched as she poked the guy on the nose twice, pulled his tongue, rubbed the top of his head, and then blew on his left ear.

The naked dude's hand rose, however, and his eyes snapped open. Very lovely eyes, come to think of it. "Please input your architect's pin number," he intoned gruffly. 

"Hopefully this doesn't need to be the same pin number as his original architect," Sara muttered. And then she entered 4852, which Len of course memorized. Just in case. Not like a four digit pass code was hard to remember, though.

"Pin accepted. I'm Mick. The fuck are we doing in Marble Hall?"

"The Bad Place got reorganized and your neighborhood was shut down. We're turning you back on, though, hot stuff." Sara grinned impishly. "We need a place to keep safe while we wait for some very naughty demons to get spanked."

"I'm gonna need some clothes, then." Mick snapped his fingers and was suddenly dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Which looked good on him, but Len rather missed the all-natural appearance. Though it was very... distracting. "So, where are we setting up shop?"

* * *

Step one in any decent heist was learning what assets were available to work with. 

For example, Sara knew the lay of the land in the Bad Place. But while she was willing to help Len hide, she didn't seem all that willing to stick her neck out to help rescue Lisa. Admittedly, Sara had gone pretty far for Len already. She'd been assigned to his Bad Place neighborhood under the auspices of the architect Hunter Zolomon, who was a sadistic bastard of the worst sort.

Sara had coordinated with Meadow in secret to get the proof that Zolomon and Thawne were trying to recreate their own little slice of the old order and conning other architects, like Harrison Wells, into unwittingly going along with it. She'd protected Len from the worst of the torture he'd been subjected to as well. His father...

Len still wasn't sure if the person who'd been torturing him was the real Lewis Snart or not. The girl, thankfully, hadn't been the real Lisa. Watching him beat her...

The memories still made Len feel sick to think about them. Lisa was, theoretically, safe enough in Wells' neighborhood. But Meadow was now dead. Retired, scattered across the surface of a thousand suns or something like that. If Harrison couldn't protect his own friend from that kind of horrific death, then Len wasn't exactly filled with confidence that his sister would be okay.

However, Len now had a second asset to consider. Mick.

Once they left the Marble Hall, Sara had taken them to the nearest train station. There were wanted posters up on a billboard, but no one was paying attention to them and it wasn't a particularly crowded station either. Mick summoned a train and they hopped aboard and then sketched out the details of what kind of neighborhood Mick could create. He'd automatically setup the neighborhood as it was before he was deactivated, but Mick had added that he'd make whatever alterations they wanted as long as he got to sit back and drink beer.

"You're more helpful than any Bad Janet I've ever met," Sara remarked.

"Not a Janet. I'm Mick. And I'm a person - a guy, not luggage," Mick narrowed his eyes at them, as if daring either one of them to refute what he'd said.

"I'm a human, so I don't know the first thing about whatever anti-neighborhood interface prejudice you're referencing with the luggage thing," Len said, ignoring Sara kicking him under the table. "Sounds shitty, though. They really count you as luggage?"

"Yeah. Why'd ya think I got marbelized in the first place? Certainly didn't volunteer for that shit." Mick gave Sara a long look. "You ain't marbelizing me again when this is done."

"Marbelizing Ja... er Neighborhood Interfaces without their permission isn't legal anymore. Marble Hall must've been overlooked." Sara shrugged. "It goes on our list of problems to solve once the bad guys are dealt with." She'd explained in full the situation they were looking at on the way to the train station, though she'd left out that Len was human. Len hadn't been keen on bringing that up when they could potentially be eavesdropped on by the wrong demon, but he didn't think it'd hurt in the long run to tell Mick the truth now.

In fact, making sure to tell Mick the truth might even swing the guy around to seeing thing Len's way.

"So what's your plan. Hide out in the neighborhood and then what? Wait for your troubles to magically go away?" Mick asked mockingly. He had a beer in his hand already. Len hadn't even heard a sound.

"Well, not magically. Harrison's got a plan." Sara shrugged. "We wait for Harrison to take care of things and then we're golden."

"Harrison couldn't even save his friend from being forcibly retired," Len pointed out, watching Sara shudder reflexively at the mention of retirement. "I don't think it'll be that easy."

"So what do you expect us to do, Len? I'm a torture demon, not even a real architect. Upper management isn't gonna listen to what I have to say here in the Bad Place."

"Where could we go that they would listen to you?" Len asked.

Sara just shook her head. Like Len had thought, he'd just about pushed her as far as she was willing to go. But Mick looked thoughtful, intrigued even. If Len was reading him right, Mick seemed like the sort who liked to say fuck you to authority just for shits and giggles.

Admittedly, that could simply be an inherited trait from whatever Bad Janet had been used to create Mick in the first place. But still... could go deeper. Worth keeping an eye on him as potential ally.

Len had heard that the head honcho in the Bad Place these days was a guy known as Rip Hunter - no relation to Hunter Zolomon. He'd taken over when Shawn, the previous Head Architect, had moved on to running the Medium Place. It might be too risky to go to the Medium Place directly. But it was possible that Rip Hunter might be worth approaching. And if not him, then the building he worked in apparently had a portal to where the Judge resided. Poke enough wasp nests with the uncomfortable reality that their perfect new system wasn't so perfect and, well...

The other option was to go back. To rescue Lisa and bring her back to their new neighborhood and hope that no one ever noticed their hidey-hole. Just one more vast infinity among the myriad eternities.

"Got another beer?" Len asked Mick. A cold one appeared on the table in front of Len, condensation rising off the top like it'd just been pulled fresh from a fridge and the top popped off. Grabbing the bottle, Len raised it in salute of Mick, smiled at him with only a little bit of a leer in his expression, and then drank deep. First beer he'd had in months and quite possibly the best thing he'd ever tasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meadow, just in case it wasn't clear, was Hartley's name as a demon. Harrison convinced everyone he'd personally retired Meadow, when really he'd turned Meadow into a human and wiped his memories. I'll go into that more in later chapters. (One of the meanings of Hartley is 'stag meadow', which is how I got the name Meadow.)


End file.
